


We only see our depths in analog

by Project0506



Series: Soft Wars [94]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Introspection, M/M, gen - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-01
Updated: 2020-06-01
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:40:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24488365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Project0506/pseuds/Project0506
Summary: Rex remembers apologies he owes
Relationships: CC-1138 | Bacara/CT-7567 | Rex
Series: Soft Wars [94]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1683775
Comments: 23
Kudos: 378





	We only see our depths in analog

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Slow Road Home](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23981401) by [Project0506](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Project0506/pseuds/Project0506). 



This time Rex suddenly remembers. He’s seen this before, the almost-invisible tremors rippling through shoulders, the breathing held a deliberate, controlled even. He’s seen the stiffness in limbs forced still. He’s seen Bacara have bad nights, just as Bacara has seen him have the same. It’s the first in a while that he remembers the time he caused it.

“Okay?” Bacara mumbles and Rex’s chest burns for him. He’s _hurting_ and he deserves to have Rex there for him, being anything he needs to help him through. He shouldn’t need to be worrying about anyone else.

Rex turns a kiss to his bare shoulder, curls himself a little firmer around. He won’t do him the disservice of lying.

“Not okay,” Bacara decides.

“One at a time.” If Rex lets them, they’ll focus on him. They’ll focus on him and his issues and Bacara will tuck his vulnerability back inside his skin to ferment a little longer, to sour a little more. It isn’t fair. Things are supposed to be _better_ on Concord Dawn, for all that that is a childlike notion. “One at a time,” he begs but Bacara is already rousing.

“’s wrong?”

Rex has never been immune to not-wanting, for all that he’s lectured every one of his own that’s passed through his hands. Conversations are like lancing a wound: the more they hurt the more vital they are. Rex is not immune to not wanting to talk and he doesn’t want to now. Bacara isn’t a novice in pulling words from him anyway. Rex has never done will with silences he didn’t initiate.

“I’m sorry.” It’s an apology he’s owed for years, has known he’s owed it from the moment it was due but he kept it bundled it up in his heart like the worst sort of cowardice. “I’m sorry.”

Bacara is quiet, his hands move soft around Rex’s back, the curve of his head. He’d be just as fine if Rex explains as he would if those were the only words pressed to his chest. Because for him, this _isn’t_ for him. For Bacara this is something Rex needs to say and he’ll give him the space to say it.

It would never occur to him that an apology might be something he deserves.

“I messed up. I was selfish and you deserved better than that.” Rex can feel the breath he takes, knows that words when they come would be conciliatory, but not understanding. “Kit.”

Rex can feel the breath he loses.

Silence extends into the warm summer night, stretching like cicada-crooned eternities in the dark. The sun has sank and the moons rise late tonight. It’s the type of night for confessions.

“That wasn’t fair to you.”

Bacara hums. It tears Rex that the sound isn’t strictly agreement.

“You were trying to help.”

“Partially.”

Mostly, Rex might even allow, when he decides to try being fairer to himself.

“You were. You saw that I was. Wasn’t.”

That Bacara was isolated and suffering with it. That he wasn’t okay and hadn’t been for a very long time. But those aren’t words Bacara can use. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

“You wanted to share the important people in your life with me.”

Because it wasn’t just Kit was it? It was Kix too. It was Rex wanting to collect all the people in his life together, wanting them to get along wanting them to be for each other what they were for Rex.

Even if that wasn’t what they needed.

“Partially.”

Admonishment flicked against his thigh, and Rex can see the edges of a frown on Bacara’s face. You’re too hard on yourself, he won’t say, but he’ll think.

“There was a time,” Rex says, because he might be beginning to understand Bacara, might be beginning to understand how best to reach, “where Kix and I weren’t what we are.” They don’t know what they are, and they’ve barely discussed it. Friends isn’t word enough, best friends a concept too trite.

Kix is the shoulder pressed next to Rex’s. Kix holds him upright and holds his stance solid.

“There was a moment when he wasn’t sure what he wanted us to be, _if_ he wanted us to be anything beyond professional. He was unsure and unsteady. And he came to me to talk about it.”

Rex has few regrets. He has missteps and mistakes, but they’re opportunities to improve, to learn. The moment he thrust Bacara unprepared into the undertow that was Kit, that he’d tried to force a connection between two people he cared about but who were strangers and strange things to each other: that was one of his regrets. The moment he flirted with Kix, ignored the boundaries Kix hadn’t yet raised but was considering: that was another.

“But I had things I wanted and I was willing to quietly try to tip the scale in my favor, while he was vunlerable. And that wasn’t fair to him.”

There’s consideration now, tinging the quality of silence.

“We’re not actually talking about Kix are we?”

“We can be.” Because Rex is beginning to understand Bacara. Bacara will oppose injustice where it happens, so long as it’s happening to someone else.

“That sounds like it wasn’t fair,” he tries and the words are as clumsy and unpracticed in his mouth as the times he’s tried to force standard Mando’a. For Rex’s sake, always, even when Rex wishes he wouldn’t. “It sounds like he deserves an apology. And your best effort, that it won’t happen again.”

There’s a galaxy of words they don’t say, that they won’t. Bacara thinks it’s for Rex. Rex knows it’s for Bacara.

“I’m sorry,” he says. You deserved better, he doesn’t. “I ignored your boundaries,” he says. You were overwhelmed because I pushed, he doesn’t. “I won’t let it happen again,” he says. You are far more important than what I want from you.

He stops. Waits. Considers. Decides.

Sometimes they leave too much unsaid.

“You’re too important.”

It’s the edge of too much, the way it always is. Bacara can’t look at him. They, neither of them, shy away. They both want to, a little.

“Thank you,” Bacara says, always says when someone remembers he’s a person in his own right with all the thoughts and needs that means.

Rex doesn’t say love, because the night already overflows with confessions and Bacara still almost shakes. He’ll wait til morning, til they’ve both refound their footing in the light. In the morning, Rex’s love won’t be a secret to admit and Bacara’s return won’t be a weakness to disguise.

“I love you,” Bacara says. Because he’s as contrary as he pretends he isn’t.

The soap bubble tension breaks, and Rex is laughing before he knows he wants to.

He forgets, sometimes, that Bacara has always seen more than he’s said.

“I love you,” Rex says, “even when you steal my dramatic moments.”

“I can’t sleep when you brood.”

It’s too dark to see more than the edges of Bacara’s smirk, but Rex tastes it dark-chocolate-caff-sweet and goes back for seconds. “Thank you,” he says and Bacara rolls him under a shoulder.

They’ve never been good at accepting gratitude, not for the bare minimum.

Rex stretches under the press of his love and sleeps safe.


End file.
